I lose it at the post office

I’m not social. I don’t care about Society with a capital S, I prefer the company of my few good friends, most of whom don’t Rate. Nonetheless, because I’m part of a rooted and privileged community I’m called upon now and then to put on linen and mingle with a better crowd and try and keep a smile on my face and my personality disorder at bay.

Thus I found myself at a benefit a few weeks ago at which a friend who is very social told me about a novel coming out by a friend of hers about Sarah Palin becoming president and the U.S. going Christian. I was quite interested in the novel. I collect these dystopian fantasies because they are so at odds with my experience. I DON’T think there’s going to be a Christian nation any time soon, I think the fundamentalist tide that brought Reagan in has long since crested and gone, and gay marriage is the law of the land, and a good thing too. There are lots of better things to worry about– for instance Islamophobia. But ever since I was little I heard these warnings about the Christian nation and the goyim oppressing us, which I now regard as paranoid and self-involved and worthy of being exploded.

After the benefit, my social friend got in touch to hook me up with the author, but when I looked into the book I determined that the author is not Jewish, so it was not my material, and I told my social friend as much.

Then the other day I went into the post office and she was there talking to a friend of hers and brought me into the conversation. It was all in the moment, i.e., I had not parked my personality disorder outside. So in the very next breath when the Christian nation was brought up, I said defiantly I am NOT interested in the Christian nation. Small patches of color appeared in her cheeks, but she rallied and said in a plucky voice, You should be; they wouldn’t be very nice to you! I said, It’s not going to happen. Sarah Palin was soundly rejected by the voters, she’s a joke. I’m much more concerned about the Zionist nation, which poses an actual threat to–

My friend backed away with a cracked smile, waving her hands in front of her face to indicate that she had had enough.

If you have a personality disorder you spend a lot of time in life in what a friend has called the FUCK FUCK FUCK! moment, in which you review your triumph and think how you might have done better. I can say that this time it hasn’t been that bad. I was very rude, and I regret that, but I made my position clear, and I’ll live with the consequences. As Emily Dickinson said, “The soul selects her own society Then shuts the door.” I don’t think anyone’s going to bug me anytime soon about the Christian nation.

Phil’s reaction just means he’s human. If you have a hot button issue and someone brings it up unexpectedly you might make a damn fool of yourself. It’s happened to me. The answer is to either have a canned speech ready or simply to smile politely and change the subject.

ok. I see his point now that I reread it. he’s talking to leftist robots who can only digest what the media tells them to munch on as they regurgitate rehashed politics. yeah, who needs em…
But tell the puppie girl novelist that she is in la-la land and should re-hone her message and focus on Zionism and their messianic media warriors. Have fun with her and knock her off guard. She’ll probably panic and think you’re a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, walk away….

Let me say that even as a supposed Christian if the US ever declares or imposes a ‘official’ religion on this ‘mutt’ nation I’m outa here.
I dont care how ‘benevolent it might be or try to be toward others, it would never work.
Freedom would really be finished.

So in the very next breath when the Christian nation was brought up, I said defiantly I am NOT interested in the Christian nation. Small patches of color appeared in her cheeks, but she rallied and said in a plucky voice, You should be; they wouldn’t be very nice to you! I said, It’s not going to happen. Sarah Palin was soundly rejected by the voters, she’s a joke. I’m much more concerned about the Zionist nation, which poses an actual threat to–My friend backed away with a cracked smile

no, i don’t really see this as a your personality disorder. there’s order in your logic, the way i view it. because we talk about zionism out and the open here, it’s no more radical discussing the idea of zionism than it is christianity. but here’s a country and a people (americans) and your friend having no problem discussing (or openly arguing) the christian nation or the threat of one at a party or the post office or anywhere…and yet you mention the zionist nation and she acts like you’ve got a disease. this says more about american conditioning then any ‘dis’-order you might have.

seriously, think about it. and palin is all over zionism like flies on poop. why couldn’t she have openly defended her views right out in public like she was willing to jump in and defend them when it came to the idea of a christian nation? because…even talking about the zionist nation out in public is radical! what bs.

phil, had you not been de conditioned by years of discussing zionsim you could be just like her. but you’re not, you’ll voice your views, it’s her who has the disorder.

@ Annie Robbins
Spot on! Even though the US is mostly Christian, and certainly 98% non-Jewish, if a tyranny exists here, it’s not the Christian Right. Not one of them could ever expect to get more standing ovations from our Congress than Netanyahu received. And there’s no annual congressional trek to Hagee’s TV Tent as is there is to the AIPAC convention and, especially for newbie congress critters, Israel. A futuristic novel of America would have to mirror the old 50s movie about the pod people, and they would be Gentile whores and Jewish Zionists. The real sic-fi is that it happened already but most have no clue. The friend with the cracked smile–that’s “the best and the brightest” in America today. Pitiful. Phil’s story reminds me of my first reading of Dostoyievsky’s(sic) Underground Man. The man of caprice versus The Crystal Palace, only writ most specifically, and for good reason. Phil is samizdat all the way. He knows Hagee, Palin are mere tools, and it’s the Israel Lobby that calls the shots. Nothing like living in the real world and those with cracked smiles think you’re the Martian or pod person. Think about Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. It’s here, and there really is reason for fear–it’s just that the audience thinks they are not already pod people.

… a friend … told me about a novel coming out by a friend of hers about Sarah Palin becoming president and the U.S. going Christian. I was quite interested in the novel. … After the benefit, my social friend got in touch to hook me up with the author, but when I looked into the book I determined that the author is not Jewish, so it was not my material, and I told my social friend as much.

If the novel’s concept interested you, why would the fact that author was not Jewish suddenly make the novel unworthy of your interest?

Then the other day I went into the post office and she was there talking to a friend of hers and brought me into the conversation. … when the Christian nation was brought up, I said defiantly I am NOT interested in the Christian nation. …

Strange outburst. Why “defiantly” and not just “firmly”?

… she rallied and said in a plucky voice, You should be; they wouldn’t be very nice to you!

Huh. That’s a hell of a rejoinder.

My friend backed away with a cracked smile, waving her hands in front of her face to indicate that she had had enough.

If you have a personality disorder you spend a lot of time in life in what a friend has called the FUCK FUCK FUCK! moment, in which you review your triumph and think how you might have done better. I can say that this time it hasn’t been that bad. I was very rude, and I regret that, but I made my position clear, and I’ll live with the consequences.

IMO, you acted strangely… ;-) …and perhaps you even acted rudely, but your friend – as a friend – should have known better than to taunt(?) you with her “they wouldn’t be very nice to you” comment.

Thanks Phil, I enjoyed your “confession.” I agree there’s not the slightest reasonable basis for thinking the USA will slip into a Christian Theocratic state. The excerpt of the subject book I read is just horrible as a slice of literary fiction writing, and it includes, which may be (I don’t know, like Phil I would never buy or read the whole book) the only reference to how this hypothetical theocracy treats Jews is reference to how the Nazis treated Jews, applied to how Palin’s nation treats gays. I wonder if the book even deals with foreign policy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/02/imagine-if-we-lived-under-president-sarahpalin-an-excerpt-from-christian-nation/

And does it deal with racist profiling, even?

Compare Philip Roth’s Plot Against America, positing America under a Lindbergh POTUS. Now that was written by a Jew.

In this futuristic novel, Christian Nation, the wooden writer shows us Governor Bloomberg trying to rally the anti-Christianist faction, providing money and man-power to the effort of resistance. (One of the main characters becomes an aid to “Governor” Bloomberg) I gather there is no mention at all of Bloomberg’s distinctly Jewish POV, or of AIPAC. Let me know if I’m wrong.

I’ve read the book especially has a narrow-minded focus on the evils of homosexual sin, especially in a world where it’s a second 9/11 type terrorist attack that polarizes the average citizen into supporting the establishment of a theocratic government. Similarly, reviewers complain there is a complete lack of interest in foreign affairs, which is troubling, not so much in their lack of interference, but in following through on Palin’s platform of retribution against the Islamic terrorists.

In the new Christian Nation, one reviewer states :”it’s homosexual men who are the enemy, and sodomy that is the world’s greatest sin. Islamic terrorists loading rocket launchers around airports are bad, but Rich’s theocratic leaders would run right past them to stop two young men from loading something far smaller, and far less lethal, into one another. His is a world where single men over a certain age are legally assumed to be homosexual, and where gay sex is grounds for execution. Lesbians, however, merely have to be watched (I guess some things never change), and women merely have to be pleasant and obey their husbands – who can, of course, demand any sort of kinkiness they desire. I do have to give Rich credit for making a lovely, charismatic gay man one of his protagonists, though, even if he never gets kissed, much less sodomized, anywhere on the page.” (From Amazon)

Another reviewer says, ” There is some lip service provided to the idea of supporting a Jewish state in Israel but, for the most part, the new rulers of America don’t give a damn about anybody outside their borders. The Bible may not have been written by them but, by God, it sure as sin was written for them.”

In short, I’d say Phil’s instincts were right about this book, Christian Nation. It worries about an American Taliban, when a more realistic concern is an American Zionism. Of course, that novel, even if of great literary merit, would not be published by any mainstream, relatively powerful book publisher.

Bachmann, Palin=Dominionism, the belief that born-agains being in political control is a precondition to the second coming of Christ. Political control means that civil law has been subordinated to “biblical truth”. Another precondition is that Jews must control Jerusalem and thus drives their views on the current middle east situation. It is an unsettling belief made more so by the fact that numerous prominent leaders of the Christian right are adherents. Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Tony Perkins et al are quoted in ways that people who have seen them on TV hundreds of times have never heard. This is the premise of subject book. Something’s wrong when the Hagee-Netanyahu connection, the AIPAC connection, the reality of life today, is barely alluded to…

Seriously? A book about right-wingers and fundies taking over? With barely any thing about US foreign Policy regarding Israel? Drivel like this belongs on the comments section of Salon.com, not in anything as respectable as a book.

I think the US is going to be a big mess when the climate gives up.
The gun situation and prison rape are very bad indicators of the current dysfunction and that isn’t going to get better as things deteriorate.

Well, if you’re going to lose it in public then what better place than the post office?

That said, I think it likely that Phil’s personality order has been diagnosed by none other than Dr.Weiss himself as a convenient excuse for being rude to boring people. And frankly, if Phil does need to be rude to someone why not choose some tedious hasbarist on his own blog? Wouldn’t that be far healthier all round?

On the subject of going postal, I notice Phil didn’t elaborate on exactly what he was doing in the post office. Could he have been forced by circumstances to get a part time job as a postal worker to make ends meet? A man of letters literally reduced to being a man of letters. Miriam’s cup will surely overfloweth with joy.

[EXCERPTS] . . . Besides his million-dollar compensation package, [John] Hagee has a portfolio of other ventures, including a cattle ranch in south Texas that may have religious significance. Many evangelicals believe that the arrival of a “perfect red heifer” will signal the end times. In the Old Testament, burning a red heifer and sprinkling its ashes is described as a purification ritual for priests entering the temple. Ultra-orthodox Jews believe that the birth of a modern perfect red heifer will herald the arrival of the messiah, leading to a confrontation with Muslims over the Temple Mount, where Jews believe the Temple will be rebuilt. Some evangelicals likewise regard the red heifer as a harbinger of the ultimate showdown at the Temple Mount, which they believe will be the site of the Second Coming. And they believe that time is near.
To many other observers, the advent of the red heifer threatens to provoke a violent struggle for control of the Temple Mount, with worldwide repercussions. In the late 1990s, a group of unidentified Texas ranchers reportedly bred a perfect red heifer, which generated excitement in evangelical circles until the animal sprouted some black hairs.Six years ago, the John C. Hagee Royalty Trust paid more than $5.5 million for a 7,600-acre ranch in Brackettville, Texas, where cattle are raised in a venture with the Texas Israel Agricultural Research Foundation, a nonprofit outfit operated by the pastor. . . Earl [David Earl, Hagee’s lobbyist] said that Hagee wants to share information to improve the production of livestock, particularly cattle, with an Israeli research project, but otherwise claimed to be unsure of the particulars. Dr. Scott Farhart, an obstetrician and trustee of the John C. Hagee Royalty Trust (and an elder at Hagee’s church), did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the director of the ranch. . .

The written word is great. It sits on the page exactly as you post it and no “in other words you mean to say” can change it.

In the heat of the moment when face to face with racist, bigoted propagandistas spouting nonsense on behalf of Israel’s illegal agenda, it’s another matter.

Cut to the quick and pose questions that can’t be honestly answered without their precious Hasbara unraveling. If it results in apoplectic eye popping spittle laden spluttering rage all the better. ‘Small patches of color ‘ are simply not satisfying

The US does not have to slip into a “theocratic state” to have the god-botherers cause everyone else much distress over their irrationalism. They do it now on many levels. I’ll believe they’ve settled down when they take “IN GOD WE TRUST” off the farking currency.

Our coins used to be inscribed with “MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.” Truly wisdom from the past.

As some of the commenters below say, it’s essentially a “Left Behind” novel for atheists. Just too stupid and tortured for words. Well, maybe not, since words were used in writing it, but they must have been waterboarded.

Lament not, Phil. You’re simply in touch with a reality that the overwhelming majority of souls have not a clue about. It is through their ignorance that you stress, you simply react to the fact that they walk around with blinders.

I am not so confident that we won’t get a Christian dictatorship. We have Christian fascism in Texas and other red states in the fanatical attacks on women’s rights and other issues. The right has paralyzed Congress and the federal govt in public policy, except as a means of coercion, and ALEC has done the same for many state legislatures.

However, this would not be the traditional “the goyim are out to get us” Christian dictatorship decried by liberal Jews. The Jewish establishment are more powerful than Christian fundamentalists at the national level. It would if anything be their project, for the sake of Israel, and for militarism and belligerence which place it at the center, and against any serious liberal challenge.

The organized Jews are already in bed with the Christian right for Israel’s sake, in which relationship they are the dominant partner. The traditional Jewish support of secularism and separation of church and state has already been compromised and in a crisis would be thrown away entirely, whatever the Jewish public thought. It has no more say in the President’s Conference than in the Pentagon.

With these qualifications I think Phil is right to be more concerned about Zionism, but its allies are diverse and its relations very complex. FWIW

I don’t expect a Christian theocracy to emerge in the US, but Christianity (and especially its loony forms) is a much bigger force in society, and taken much more seriously there, than in other parts of the world. The rest of the world certainly see the US as a country in which fundamentalist Christians have a great deal of influence.

I taught at a university in Atlanta, and was stunned to find that some of my students believed the Rapture was coming. I was amazed to see that, in the university Post Office, one of the staff had put up a Christian propaganda poster. I was depressed to receive an essay which had a little puff for the Bible added to the cover page.

And the spread of Christian loonies in the US armed forces is disturbing.

. . .treading lightly here, I see a curious chaos in the disorder . . .

“I determined that the author is not Jewish, so it was not my material”
but . . .
“As Emily Dickinson said, ‘The soul selects her own society Then shuts the door.’ ”

Have you have implicitly admitted that there are the few odd scraps of worthwhile material that were not penned by Jews. Oh . . . hold on. Emily was Jewish, wasn’t she? And Thoreau. They never told us these things in high school, and it wasn’t polite for a goyim to ask. Next thing ya’ know they’ll be saying Salinger was a Jew.

Going postal in the post office is perfectly appropriate, Phil. We all do it. It’s the traces of ricin wafting in the air.

We have held Vigil challenges at many Christians United For Israel spectacles and at dozens of radically committed Christian Zionist churches. We must now recognize that John Hagee is no longer widely respected, even in the evangelical Dispensational circles from which he came. He has become a rich, successful buffoon with a following among only a narrow fringe of State of Israel worshipers. Politically his call for war against Islam, wherever he finds Muslims, is useful only to the John McCain-like warmaking fringe of both parties. We should realize that even McCain does not want to be associated with Hagee’s maniacal war chant and Israel worship.

Check this paragraph out. He has links in the original. Who knew?

Christians United For Israel was spawned by the State of Israel in July 1991, right after Operation Desert Storm, through one of Israel’s propaganda front organizations called Unity Coalition for Israel (UCFI).(2) It was originally called National Unity Coalition for Israel but quietly changed its name by dropping the “National” because all the directors were Israelis. Christians United For Israel was then spun off and handed off to San Antonio Pastor John Hagee.

He adds:

Art Preisinger, a Lutheran minister associated with the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism, attended a “Night To Honor Israel” at Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas and had this to say: “From dramatic processions to keynote addresses; from offerings taken and offerings given — there was not a shred, a trace, a scintilla of Christianity in the proceedings. It (‘A Night to Honor Israel’) could well have been sponsored by the PTA or the Rotary Club.”

The fact that Jesus is left out of meetings that honor Israel is finally becoming recognized by some influential minorities in more than a few mainline Christian churches, Lutheran, Methodists, Presbyterians and Mennonite to name a few. Those who have so proclaimed may have combined memberships of perhaps 30 million members, which is no small minority!

’25 to 30 million Christian Zionists in America as of mid-2004, and growing”

I’ve read other sources that say they’re declining and run some numbers of my own on it from the US Census religious survey and imo the numbers are inflated.
But even if the other sources and I am wrong —–we ‘ve got 55 million hispanics that are 90% Catholic —-and if the immigration bills works out, soon to be another 11 million hispanics waiting the wings as future voters.
I dont see and havent seen the CZ having much real clout in DC…..I think they function more as another ‘fund raising’ org for the zionist. The few politicos from CZ districts make a little noise in congress but it’s still The Lobby + Money that rules the roost as far as I can see.

mrw, I have occasion to listen to the lunatic fringe of ‘true Christians’ on the short wave from time to time, and many/most of these types also consider the hagees and robertsons of the world to be whores: whores to capital, whores to Israel, etc.

Coincidentally I happen to land on a Hagee program surfing channels this am…first thing I saw was he had what looked like a huge shawl draped around his neck….then he undid it with a dramatic flourish and held it up and it was the Israeli flag. I hit the mute button and just watched for a minute….when you’re not distracted by listening to the words and just paying attention to his face and demeanor you see the ugliness and ‘malevolence’ behind it quite clearly.

I’m afraid your last sentence is wrong, Phil: I am going to bug you about Christian Nation. I’m a long-time reader and supporter of your invaluable website but am really taken aback at your attitude toward a friend trying to get you to look at a book she thinks valuable and your attitude toward the book itself. Do you only read books written by Jews? Are you against considering anything other than the ideas of your “safe” friends? Is this true of your readers, or at least those who left so many admiring comments on this piece?
You’re comparing apples and rocks here, confusing a dystopian (and therefore by definition exaggerated) piece of literature with what you see as the Zionist threat to American foreign policy. I guess you have never read ANIMAL FARM or anything by Margaret Atwood. Perhaps literature isn’t your thing. But it is important for a lot of people not only as an escape but as a way to follow a writer who uses imagination to play out ideas and observations of trends in society and see where they might go. Christian Nation is a NOVEL, a fantasy, an allegory, a story of what MIGHT happen to a group of people and a nation. The author is a lawyer, not a professional novelist, but he is good enough at story-telling to capture at least this reader’s attention. If you have any contacts in places outside New York and ever talk to people who have obsessions different from your own you would recognize a germ of truth in the possibility that a combination of ignorance, apathy, fear, and false beliefs JUST MIGHT bring enough people to back a Christian Nation. Does it ever bother you that our President, a highly educated and sophisticated man, has to ask God to bless our nation at the end of every speech? Do you think he is talking about the God of the Old Testament?

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